How to be cost effective while shipping

Businesses are getting more complicated every single day now.  Most of the time being successful is hard to do but with the ever changing economy of 2020 and the rules of every country, city, and state ever changing supply chains and shipping can be insane. So being wise with your money in all aspects is even more important and planning ahead has become paramount in the scheme of success.  Some areas that people didn't pay too much attention to like their shipping department or in many companies newly formed shipping department was the cost of shipping supplies.  This is an area that many companies are new too and have now found that 50-100% of their entire sales are coming from online instead of through the front door.

Panamedic forced companies to pivot and look at sales and marketing in a different way and e-commerce has been the answer.  This means that instead of giving customers a bag filled with your items that now you are taking the items and putting them in a box or a bag, taping it up and printing a shipping label to go to their personal residence. The complications in these small and yet different steps can sink a company or let it swim. 

  That sounds a bit silly, but the cost of a box, loaded with packing peanuts or paper and then shipping costs really do add up.  The question is are your orders big enough or important enough to either cover the cost of shipping or important enough that people will pay extra to get it due to shipping.  This means you need to calculate the margins you have for everything because you may not want to sell all your items online or put a limit on what can be sold singularly.

 

Now shipping supplies can be sold to fit many if not all types of items, but you should know how much you are going to make or what the item is worth in order to ship effectively and efficiently. Staying competitive may mean offering free shipping and you may lose money doing this on some items.  So know the limit at which you will not lose money on free shipping and then make that part of your store policy. This is a smart way to stay competitive and not lose money but be profitable. Knowing is important and I suggest you stay on top of your game or a competitor will beat you out eventually.